Masters is now chairman of digital investment bank Coinshares and chief investment officer at Global Advisors, and he explained in an interview with Bloomberg how distributed ledger technology is doing for the democratization of peer-to-peer transactions what the internet did for the democratization of news.

“That’s at the core of what makes this a revolution,” Masters told Blooomberg.

Leakage Problem

He was asked by Bloomberg about the potential for the problem of “leakage” in the fractional reserve monetary system, where only some of a bank’s deposits are backed by assets. Masters said no, cryptocurrencies aren’t creating leakage in that leverage, at least not yet.

Masters described a “regulatory sandbox” environment where digital assets resided for the past five years or so through the end of 2017. He said an ecosystem that’s $1 billion – $10 billion in size “is almost experimental in the scope of the main financial system.”